The present invention relates to a rack device having a receiver mounted between a pair of rack posts to hold and support a rack on the receiver, and an incubator including the rack device.
Incubators for culturing cells or microbes (cultures) form a temperature/humidity/gas environment suitable for culturing the cultures in a culturing chamber. In the culturing chamber opened at the front, a rack device is provided to place a plurality of containers (Petri dishes and the like) accommodating the cultures (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-166536).
In this case, the rack device includes pairs of front and rear rack posts which are fixed to right and left side walls of the culturing chamber, respectively, a pair of right and left receivers which are mounted between the front and rear rack posts on both of the side walls, respectively, and a rack which is held between both of the receivers. In this case, the receivers are provided with a lower wall and an upper wall arranged above the lower wall with an interval therebetween, and both right and left ends of the rack are inserted from the front between the lower and upper walls of both of the receivers to stably receive and hold the rack.
However, since a height of the rack should be changeable at need, the rack is fixed by engaging front and rear engaging hooks formed in the receivers with a plurality of engaging holes formed in a vertical direction in the front and rear rack posts. Accordingly, when the rack is removed from the culturing chamber, the engaging hooks are disengaged from the engaging holes just by, for example, a small amount of inclination for lifting the front side and thus an accident that the receivers are separated off occurs often.